Marvelous Toys and Educational Robots
2005; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 86; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/003172170508600515
ISSN1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Experimental Learning in Engineering
ResumoIT GOES zip when it moves, bop when it stops, and whirr when it stands still. I never knew just what it was, and I guess I never will. In the early Eighties, Milton Bradley and other toy makers designed several marvelous electronic toys, some of which, like the famous Big Trak, were actually programmable robots. A few weeks ago, I was rummaging around in my attic and found an old Big Trak that I had purchased for my son nearly 25 years ago. All it took was a new set of batteries, and the Big Trak came back to life. Big Trak is considered programmable because it can perform eight different functions: Forward, Reverse, Left, Right, Fire, Repeat, Delay, and Dump Trailer. Big Trak can store and play back a sequence of up to 16 of these functions. One unique aspect of Big Trak that I had forgotten over the years was the measuring system it used. A 90U counterclockwise turn was Left 15, analogous to minutes on a clock. Forward 1 was forward the length of the Big Trak itself. Playing around with this old Big Trak, I remembered what a great toy this was for teaching sequencing to children. They especially like the Fire command, which makes a cannon-like noise and flashes lights mounted on the tank's front bumper. When my 3-year-old grandson came over to visit, we sat and played with the Big Trak for about 20 minutes -- which is a long time for him. He had a little trouble pushing the number buttons, which caused Big Trak to do things like fire 55 times, instead of the intended five. Of course, he didn't mind the extra noise one bit. I never did purchase the optional dump trailer for Big Trak, but I am now bidding for one on eBay. There are usually several toys like Big Trak on the site, and they tend to be quite inexpensive. One of the reasons robots and robotic toys are so valuable is that they create learning experiences that are high in intensity. Intensity is an attribute of a learning experience that is not often discussed today, but it should be. Here is an illustration of intensity. Working multiplication problems on paper is not very intense. Working the same problems on a computer that talks to you and lets you shoot down alien space ships when you get a problem correct is much more intense. Imagine how intense it would be for a child if a robot walked up to the child's desk, called the child by name, and asked a question. Here is another example of intensity. If a teacher stands in the front of the room and talks with a child, that is not very intense. If a teacher walks to the child's desk and kneels next to the child, the experience becomes more intense. Of course, the first time children hear a naughty word must be an intense experience for them, since they seem to remember the word forever. Toys that move, talk, and seem real add intensity. Back in the Eighties, I ordered and built a Heathkit Hero, Jr., a fully autonomous personal robot. Building Hero was no small task since I had to solder 64-pin computer chip sockets to circuit boards. The construction took about 150 hours, but it was worth it. Hero was an autonomous robot because it was capable of going to sleep, waking up, walking around a room, avoiding objects, moving toward or away from a window, and speaking -- all on its own. When Hero would bump into an object, it would utter something like, Oops! or Excuse me! If Hero got stuck, it would say, Help, help, help! A colleague of mine and I had a lot of fun taking Hero to classrooms in the area. Hero was like the fairy-tale character the Pied Piper. Kids would flock to Hero and want to touch him. They were amazed when the robot talked to them or bumped into an object. Unfortunately, Hero was a contraption that was nearly impossible to keep functioning properly. After a year or so of experimenting with Hero and kids, we gave up and donated Hero to our engineering department. Finding the Big Trak in my attic reminded me of my days with Hero and of writing a chapter on robots and kids in an early book of mine titled Advanced Technology in Education. …
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